First Week of School in Review!

Back to school is in full swing!

This past week was all about getting used to routines, learning to listen and follow the rules, and just having fun.

My first graders worked on a little craftivity called

 Words that Describe...

Each child shared a word that described themselves and I wrote them on the board. Then, they chose six of their favorite words and wrote them in the boxes. They also drew a picture of themselves in the frame. I always do this activity during the first week of school because it's easy to do, fun for the children, and they look so pretty hanging up in the classroom.

Right click the photos and click open link in new tab to make the photos larger.

I have a similar activity in my teaching store for free. 

You can check it out here.

We spent a lot of time learning the Whole Brain Teaching Classroom Rules. Saying the rules, along with the gestures, has really been such fun. The booklet below was sent home so the children can teach their family the rules, as well. I am only using four of the five rules. Looks like I neglected to snap a picture of rule 3! LOL! You can find this booklet here.

We also began assembling our Journeys Interactive Notebook. We decorated and glued on the cover and started adding the sight word pages. Each week, the children will highlight the words to know for the week.

I read one of my favorite books!

Afterwards, the children completed their first book review.

I modeled how to do this and the whole class wrote the same sentence. I don't want you to think my first graders are writing this well, on their own, already!

We'll be doing lots of book reviews. I have book reviews for every season, holiday, and theme you can think of. You can find the one above here.

All in all, it was a great first week of school for my first graders. Since I taught them last year, as kindergartners, we are already very comfortable with each other and they quickly caught on to the first grade rules and procedures.

Kindergarten was a whole different ballgame! 

They will need a few more weeks of training before I show you anything truly productive! LOL!

Here is a fun name writing activity we did.

We also started the Aa page in our alphabet/handwriting book. 

I didn't snap any pictures though.

We brainstormed words that began with Aa and I modeled how to write capital A. I ran out of time before we got to practice writing lower case a. It's very easy to run out of time with kindergarten! But, they did enjoy it, so we'll finish it up on Monday.

Classroom Reveal 2014-2015

One of my favorite things to do is to look at photos of classrooms. So, I thought I'd share my classroom photos with all of you. I have a small classroom with no built in furniture, so everything in there is out in the open. There's just no where to hide anything! LOL!

I don't have a classroom theme. I never had one in all the years I've been teaching. I just like bright colors and organization.

Here is the view from the door.

Here you see the writer's notebook station on the left and the sight word station on the right.

I always display some transition words for the children to use when they are writing.

My students don't necessarily complete their work at this table, though. They are allowed to go anywhere in the room to work during station time.

This is my phonics station.

You can find the colored blends posters here.

This is my work on writing station.

Hanging up and ready to go are my August/September words for writing and some noun and verb cards from my Fun With Parts of Speech. You can see I have two activities ready to go. Making a list of school words and making a book about school. Both of these can be found here. I'll be hanging up my writing menu soon too!

This is my classroom library.

My character trait posters can be found here.

The reading skills and strategies posters can be found here.

I keep extra supply bins here.

This is my Super Improvers Wall. The left side is for kindergarten and the right side is for first grade. I haven't put up names for kindergarten yet. I decided it was easier to put the children's names up instead of labeling each new star they earn.

This is my focus board. I teach kindergarten and first grade, so that is why you see two sight word labels.

You can find my alphabet posters here.

And I have some of the focus board labels here and here.

This year, I brought all my Journeys files and activities to school, and they now live in this HUGE file cabinet draw.

I have everything I need for each week inside a labeled folder.

 I am nothing if not organized! :)

I hope you enjoyed my classroom reveal. I am very excited to begin the new school year on Monday. And it's my birthday this week! Double the fun!

I'll be back soon to do another AWESOME bin giveaway!

Michaels...#create2educate #sweepstakes

It's that time again! Time to start setting up our classrooms for another successful school year! This year, I am especially excited to set up my classroom, because I have teamed with @Michaels to help teachers and parents to Create2Educate with DIY projects and crafts. And here's some more great news! If you decide to get your craft on too, you can enter to win a $50 gift card to Michaels! I'll explain more about that later, after I finish showing off my creations.

I went on a shopping spree at Michaels and bought some supplies to help me make two different projects.

Here is what I purchased...

This year, I am changing the way my children go to stations. In the past, I always used a pocket chart for the children to choose their station. The pocket chart hung on a door, my students put their name next to the station they wanted to go to first, and then went to that station. However, my kindergarten students sometimes forgot which station they chose and would wind up at the wrong station or they got confused and went to a different station. So, I decided that this year I was going to have the children bring their name to the actual station they were visiting, to alleviate this problem. I knew in my head exactly what I wanted at each station to hold their names, and I went to Michaels and found just what I envisioned. I couldn't possibly have asked for a better holder.

I bought 5 of them, in the prettiest colors, along with some cute stickers to make them look even nicer. I attached my station signs using a hot glue gun and stuck on the stickers, and love the way they came out. 

Each student will have a colored pencil, labeled with his/her name, to use to go from station to station. And I know they won't wind up at the wrong station anymore!

For my next project, I decorated a bulletin board to use for Nice Notes.

Creating a positive classroom community is very important to me. My students will be writing nice things about their peers all year long. And their sentiments will hang on this beautiful board.

This display was super easy to make! I printed out the Nice Note letters and banners, and hot glued them to the boards. I also glued on some white ribbon and the colorful wooden stars.

This beautiful board will look great in my classroom and will serve a very important purpose. 

Click here for more information about the Nice Notes!

And there you have it! 
Two super simple DIY crafts that anyone can make. 

I hope I have inspired you to get creative because now it's your turn! Michaels is having a DIY crafting contest on Instagram from August 1-15.  Each day, a winner will be chosen to win a $50.00 gift card to Michaels! To enter, all you have to do is create something for your classroom, take a picture of it, and upload it to Instagram. Tag @Michaels and use the hashtags #Create2Educate and #sweepstakes starting August 1 on Instagram. If you don't have an Instagram account, then get one now! It's super easy to do! 

Happy crafting!

My First Week in Pictures

Like many of you, I am happy to report that I survived my first of school. I'd be lying if I said it was easy! Since I taught my first graders when they were in kindergarten, they came to me already familiar with my procedures and I was actually able to start stations today. Here are some pictures of what they did...

At the Grammar Station, they made sentences with Lakeshore's Sentence Building Learning Center. I had some paper there for them to write some of their favorite sentences.

At the Phonics Station, they played Bingo. My phonics station will be used for spelling, but we didn't start Journeys yet, so I just put out some fun activities for the children to use, so they could get used to our station procedures.

At the Listening Station, they thoroughly enjoyed Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and I Love School, by Philemon Sturges.

This is my library, and we call this station Read to Self. I am doing my own version of the Daily 5. Daily 8 to be exact! We started building our stamina on Wednesday. The children started with 3 minutes, just like the book suggested. Then, they read for 5 minutes. And then 7 minutes! They were supposed to go for 10 minutes today, but we ran out of time and didn't get to it. However, the children who went to Read to Self, followed all of the suggestions from our Read to Self anchor chart. They all read for 15 minutes! It was a beautiful sight! They didn't even realize I took their picture!

At the Word Work Station, they practiced the Journeys back to school words. This is my newest Journeys game, Read it, Make it, Write it. It kept them actively engaged the entire time.

At the Work on Writing Station, the children used my School Supplies Scrambled Sentences activity. They put the sentences in order, and began writing them in their booklet.

Here is my Writer's Notebook Station. They children can write whatever they want. Most of them used the Writing Topics Cards to help generate ideas. They were happy to see them again this year, as they were a huge part of their kindergarten writer's workshop last year.

The only station that was not open today, was Meet With the Teacher. I wanted to keep myself accessible to help answer questions and to make sure our first station experience was a success. At one point, though, I told the children that they were on their own because I was going to pretend to have a small group at my teacher station. They got a kick out of watching me teach my invisible children how to read! All kidding aside, this was very helpful to me, because it made me realize that I would have to rearrange my teacher table to make room for my small groups. 

Once I start Journeys, I will have 2 whole group lessons, Monday through Thursday. My first whole group lesson will be about 30 minutes and will cover HFW, phonics, spelling, and grammar. This will be followed by 4-20 minute station rotations. I will meet with 3 reading groups a day. During the fourth rotation, I will meet with my Tier 2 and/or Tier 3 students. My final whole group lesson will cover the comprehension skills and strategies for the week. This will be followed by a short writer's workshop. Friday's will be reserved for testing and seasonal/thematic activities. Here is an image of what my rotation schedule will look like...

Since I don't have a teacher station yet, today, I replaced all the teacher stations with another round of Read to Self.

Next week, we will continue to build our stamina for Read to Self, and continue stations. We also have the SAT for 4 days, so first grade will be very, very busy!

I'll be back this weekend to let you know who the lucky winner is from my Learning Resources Giveaway! Right now, it's 7:00 PM and I can hardly keep my eyes open!